The Mt. Guyot dayhike is neither exciting nor original. In fact, Matthew (and
possibly others) had already done this - and had included nearby Mt.
Chamberlin as well. But it had to be done (at least if dayhiking the SPS list
is one of your twisted goals),
so Rick and I decided to do it as a warmup for the first
of nine days we planned in the Sierra for early June. We had originally
planned to head to Oregon and Washington, much as we had done the previous
year, but a low snow year in California got us interested in climbing peaks
in the Sierra that might not otherwise be reachable at this time of year.

I met up with Rick at the Cottonwood Pass TH almost exactly at the 3a meeting
time. I had thought I'd be up to an hour earlier when I left San Jose after
8p the night before, but alas there would be no catnapping for me. Rick had
arrived a few hours earlier, had slept a bit and was already dressed and ready
to go with his trademark smile when I pulled in. Rick graced me an extra
15 minutes to get my act together and off we went.

It was still dark when we went over Cottonwood Pass at 4:40a,
but soon daybreak
crept up on us, we stowed our headlamps, and on we slogged as the day caught up
with us. The trail isn't particularly steep, but it has a good deal of sand
that tends to sap one's strength. It wasn't so much a problem in the morning
while we were still fresh, but would be more of a pain on the afternoon
return. We reached the crossing of Rock Creek
before 8:30a where we took our
first real break. Five hours into the hike and we were at a lower elevation
than when we started, a bit demoralizing. But we were finally much closer now
and could see our peak rearing up to the northwest.
The creek had only moderate flow, and getting across was no issue. We
continued up to Guyot Pass,
marked by a large carving on a pine tree where
the trail goes over the pass - crude, but effective.
Turning southwest, we started up the Northeast
Ridge towards the summit of Guyot. It was an easy
class 2 climb, though Rick
found some class 3 to play around
on as we reached the summit ridge. I was
just trying to get to the summit by this time, so I bypassed the class 3 on
the northwest side, only reaching the summit a few minutes ahead of Rick.

It was after 10:30a, more than seven hours to reach the summit.
Ugh. Somehow
I had hoped it would have been faster than that. We signed into the register
that went back only a year or two, then had another rest before starting down.
We weren't too excited about climbing Chamberlin,
but it seemed shameful to
come out all this way and leave the other peak unclimbed. Neither Rick nor I
wanted to make the call whether to climb it or leave it, and by the time we
got back to Guyot Pass the decision was still not made. Compounding the
decision were clouds moving in from the southeast, making it look like
we might be in for a thunderstorm or two. Seeing that Rick was
going to wait me out, I decided to call it quits. I just couldn't see making
the slog to Chamberlin and actually calling it fun. And so we headed back
down the trail, and to be honest I didn't mind having to make another trip of
it. My philosophy has been to try to keep the fun factor throughout the hike
as much as possible rather than suffer for the last 7hrs of a 21hr marathon.

We got back to Rock Creek at 12:30p, taking a break to remove our boots and
cool our feet
in the cool stream. It was rather refreshing as the day was
quite warm and our feet had been getting a bit too toasty in our boots.
Continuing on, we ran into several parties of PCTers making their way north
into the
Whitney region. One group
we talked to long enough to find out their trail
names (Fireball, 30/30, and Ladybug). They had looked surprised when I had
asked - maybe they expected this was a tradition only known to fellow PCTers,
but were happy to offer them up and give us the short stories behind them.

The clouds
came in a little thicker as we climbed uphill towards the western
flank of Cirque Peak, but the rain never came. In fact by the time we got back
to Cottonwood Pass the weather was a non-factor altogether. I was content by
this time that we hadn't gone to Chamberlin because I was teetering on the
non-funness of the outing. We both commented on the seemingly unending
switchbacks east of the pass, not having remembered it as such in the freshness
of the early morning by headlamp. Shortly before 6p we finally hauled ourselves
back to the trailhead where we had a celebratory beer.
The only really good
things about the hike were that we had reached the summit of Guyot (and thus
crossed that one off the list) and secondly that it hadn't taken any longer.
But the scenery
and climbing were less than inspiring and it seemed unlikely we'd be remembering
this one fondly anytime in the future. Oh well, they can't all be great outings.
:-)

Anonymous comments
on 07/05/07:
Bob, your're getting jaded! The pan linuep of summits from here look amazing: Corcoran, Whitney, Tyndall, Brewer, Kaweahs, Needham: all in a circle!-jimmyjayChris Randall comments
on 09/21/07:
Hey Bob, I was checking out Rick's photos of this trip, and I notice you've got a Big Sur Half Marathon shirt on. It matches exactly the shirt I have from the 2003 race. Did you run in that race?Bob comments
on 10/04/07:Did you run in that race?No, my wife did. The kids and I were on the sidelines watching her run by. So we probably so you as well. :-)